Inconsistent and/or inaccurate branding of a business can make it difficult for people to understand who you are, what you are doing and why your business exists. Many small businesses tend to put branding on the back burner and focus more on growing their business. This is a big mistake because your brand can be the key to your success. Keep in mind that your brand is also your company’s face to the world and people need to be easily able to find you. You want to start tweeting your brand, networking your brand, advertising/promoting your brand, but most importantly, be consistent!

If you have your own business then you know how important it is to get your brand “out there.” By now you also know how important it is to have a strong web/social media presence if you expect your company to survive and thrive amongst your competition. Part of the strategy to meet your goals and build your brand should be to actively blog comment.You should also be participating in the conversations in and around your brand’s niche. There’s a whole lot going on in cyberspace regarding you company’s specialty, I guarantee it! And why wouldn’t you want to be an active participant? If you aren’t, you are probably missing out on precious dollars that I know you would love to have.

I read a lot of blogs each and every day and I am very thankful to Google Reader for keeping it all organized for me, but I am even more thankful to all of the bloggers out there that keep the original, awesome content coming! If you read other blogs, I guarantee that you will come up with some ideas that could help your future blogging efforts or that may help you to market your brand more effectively. Either way it’s all good stuff.

I don’t think it would be an understatement to say that in the past five years social media has absolutely exploded! Facebook has an estimated 700 million worldwide users and Twitter has about 50 million tweets being sent per DAY. If you have your own business and you do not have a web presence via either a website, Facebook page or Twitter account you may be missing out on reaching as astonishing number of people that can potentially turn into new clients or customers. But before you get too excited we need to chat… You need goals and a strategy. Otherwise you have a Facebook page and Twitter account but what’s the point if you don’t know how to properly utilize it? Just to say you have one? OK, so your prospective client or customer goes to your Facebook page to “Like” it. Great! Are you providing them with any useful and engaging content? The social media world can be very intimidating to someone that is not familiar with it at all. However, I think everyone has been convinced and can agree that social media is now necessary for the survival of a business in today’s world. And if it’s not necessary, it always helps.

As an internet marketing company that designs and builds websites for small businesses, we at Mainely SEO get the question time and time again when we meet with new, potential clients…

“Can you make our website like the ones where things pop up and fly by, there’s music and it just looks really fun and cool?”

Each and every time we tell them “You really don’t want to do that [in fact, we won’t build Flash websites] and here are three reasons why…”

Flash websites [those created entirely in Adobe Flash] may be visually appealing with all the fun and excitement they usually contain, but there are several reasons why a flash website isn’t the best option for you or your business and how it can actually do more harm than good.

If you want to take your blog to the next level, here are 5 WordPress Plugins you may want to consider using. The best part about all of them is that they are FREE!

Social Media widget/icons – This is the first plugin that you want on your blog if you want to be make your content shareable. Sharing content is the entire point right? AddThis and ShareThis are the two most popular icons that I know you have all seen at the bottom of various blog posts and articles. Get this plugin and be part of the power of the sharing revolution.

LinkWithin – If you would like to increase your pageviews and time people spend on your website [decrease your bounce rate], you may want to consider installing the LinkWithin plugin. This is a blog widget that that appears under each post, linking to related stories from your blog archive. The content you write is valuable and you don’t want the past blog posts that you have spent so much time on getting lost behind all of your new content. The best part about this plugin is that it is minimally styled and will fit right into your website design.

I am sure by now you have heard and seen the term “SEO” and if you don’t know what it means, I am sure you have either Googled or asked a friend, “What does SEO stand for or mean?” It stands for Search Engine Optimization. Now you’re asking yourself “What does it mean to optimize a search engine?” And Do I really need it? If you want traffic to your website then “YES!” you not only need SEO, your website/business’s survival and growth depends on it. Many business owners don’t realize they need it, but once we begin to list the advantages, it becomes very clear that SEO is necessary.

There are millions of websites with billions of pages. Only the top 10 web pages are listed on a Search Engine Result Page (or SERP as you may have seen it written in some text). To Google, these 10 web pages on the first page of the SERP are the most relevant and valuable results for the keywords you used for your search.

When you first heard of Twitter you didn’t pay much attention now did you? I know you have been hearing A LOT about the power of Twitter and how well it works to get the message out. Most of you can probably remember learning about the crisis in Iran, the earthquake in Haiti, the protests in Egypt, Charlie Sheen and the recent earthquake in Japan and thinking, “All of these events have one thing in common and that is… Twitter?!” Think about it. It’s true. Twitter gives every single human being the platform or ability to shout or “tweet” anything and everything they would like. Think of this way… It’s like opening the window to your house and yelling outside whatever it is that you have to say. Except on Twitter it is all recorded and can be categorized for anyone and everyone to find if they want to or need to. This is such a powerful tool to use when you need help. You have a voice and it is now heard.

If you are a blogger you may have heard of the Zemanta plugin available for various blogging platforms such as WordPress, MoveableType, Drupal and Joomla. The plugin can also be installed on your Firefox, Chrome or IE web browser. If you haven’t used The Zemanta plugin I would highly recommend it for many different reasons, one of which is to help you build links. Zemanta is essentially a blogging coach, helping improve your writing in many different ways. As you start to write a new post, it suggests related content already on the web similar to yours to link to. It will also show you complementary pictures to embed in to your posts and will recommend popular keywords to include in your copy. By implementing these suggestions, you should receive more traffic because you’re using popular keywords and your posts will be more engaging with good pictures so your visitors will stay on your site longer.

Zemanta as a Link Building Tool

Most SEO professionals perform their own keyword research before starting to write a new post and probably already have an idea for images, but if you don’t this is a great tool. My favorite use for the Zemanta plugin is to help me find related sites to acquire links from. I start out by creating a new blog post and pasting a list of keywords I am trying to target. Zemanta scans over the keywords and makes recommendations for similar articles from their network of sites. The articles listed in Zemanta tend to have more traffic and authority, so they make great link targets.

Creating a blogger outreach program to promote your brand is really quite simple and the results can be astonishing, trust us! What is a blogger outreach program and how do I get on the right track to building my brand? A blogger outreach program consists of researching and contacting bloggers within your specific niche and getting them to engage with your brand. Engaging could mean having them review your product or mention it in a blog post. Adding a social media component such as a Twitter mention or Facebook wall post and combining it with a contest or give-a-way can catapult the effectiveness of the outreach program. All of these actions help build links to your website and social media profiles, they will help you gain followers and increase your brand mentions online. All of which are very positive signals to Google. It is also important to maintain relationships with the bloggers, because hopefully you will want to work with them again to promote your next big thing.

Having automated SEO tools performing tedious and mundane tasks and providing alerts to things of which you want to be made aware, saves a SEO professional a great deal of time. Anything that saves time for me is a huge plus. Here are three SEO tools I use everyday to make my life a lot easier as a search marketer.